President Bush believes in an "ownership" society, which means that except for the wealthy, you're on your own. The president's budget would cut funding for Medicaid, food stamps, education, transportation, health care for veterans, law enforcement, medical research and safety inspections for food and drugs. And, of course, it contains big new tax cuts for the wealthy.

These are the new American priorities. Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.

F.D.R. would have stared slack-jawed at this madness. Even his grand Social Security edifice is under assault by the vandals of the G.O.P.

While the press and the public are distracted by one sensational news story after another - Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, steroids in baseball, etc. - the president and his party have continued their extraordinary campaign to undermine the programs that were designed to fend off destitution and provide a reasonable foundation of economic security for those not blessed with great wealth.

President Bush has proposed more than $200 billion worth of cuts in domestic discretionary programs over the next five years, and cuts of $26 billion in entitlement programs. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which analyzed the president's proposal, said:

"Figures in the budget show that child-care assistance would be ended for 300,000 low-income children by 2009. The food stamp cut would terminate food stamp aid for approximately 300,000 low-income people, most of whom are low-income working families with children. Reduced Medicaid funding most certainly would cause many states to cut their Medicaid programs, increasing the ranks of the uninsured."

Education funding would be cut beginning next year, and the cuts would grow larger in succeeding years. Food assistance for pregnant women, infants and children would be cut. Funding for H.I.V. and AIDS treatment would be cut by more than half a billion dollars over five years. Support for environmental protection programs would be sharply curtailed. And so on.

Conservatives insist the cuts are necessary to get the roaring federal budget deficit under control. But they have trouble keeping a straight face when they tell that story. Laden with tax cuts, the president's proposal will result in an increase, not a decrease, in the deficit. Shared sacrifice is anathema to the big-money crowd.

The House has passed a budget that is similar to the president's, except it contains even deeper cuts in programs that affect the poor. In the Senate, a handful of Republicans balked at the cuts proposed for Medicaid. Casting their votes with the Democrats, they were able to eliminate the cuts from the Senate budget proposal. The Senate also added $5.4 billion in education funding for 2006.

All the budgets contain more than $100 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, which makes a mockery of the G.O.P.'s budget-balancing rhetoric. When Congress returns from its Easter recess, the Republican leadership will try to reconcile the differences in the various proposals. Whatever happens will be bad news for ordinary Americans. Big cuts are coming.

The advances in areas like education, antipoverty programs, health services, environmental protection and food safety were achieved after struggles that, in some cases, took many decades. To slide backward now (hurting millions of people in the process) because of a desire to siphon funds from those programs and hand them over as tax cuts to the wealthiest members of our society, is obscene.

This is not a huge national story. It's just the way things are. It was Herbert Hoover who said: "You know, the only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. They're too damn greedy."

President Bush believes in an "ownership" society, which means that except for the wealthy, you're on your own. The president's budget would cut funding for Medicaid, food stamps, education, transportation, health care for veterans, law enforcement, medical research and safety inspections for food and drugs. And, of course, it contains big new tax cuts for the wealthy.

The sad part about this is that the majority of voters who think Bush can do no wrong are the ones who will be most damaged by this budget. Go figure....

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Education funding would be cut beginning next year, and the cuts would grow larger in succeeding years.

Bush couldn't care less about education. As the people choose to remain ever more ignorant, they are easier to control by the neocons who will find it easier to make them believe that the Great Father Bush is on their side.

Quote:

Conservatives insist the cuts are necessary to get the roaring federal budget deficit under control.

And who created this soaring deficit? Bush and the neocons, of course. They're like a bunch of selfish aristocrats from the Gilded Age, taking for granted that the servants will soon come up from below stairs to clean up the messes created by their riotous partying.

Quote:

This is not a huge national story. It's just the way things are. It was Herbert Hoover who said: "You know, the only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. They're too damn greedy."

Herbert Hoover was right. Magnify that greed by about a thousoundfold and you've got the Bush regime.

Catherine

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

The sad part is, people don't have a clue. News focuses on the bright, shiny bobbles of sensationalism and barely whispers about these things that people should know. Bush has his unquestioning admirers, and it is the only way this country could be dismantled as is happening.

I work with GED students one day a week at our local college. One of them is a young man who was homeschooled by his mother because she had felt that the public schools were "dens of iniquity." This young man can tell us everything that's on Fox News channel 7 days a week. He says his mother never turns off that channel, and he says she just loves Bill O'Reilly's show.

The only time the Fox News channel is turned off at his house is.....(drum roll!).....when they're in church!

Catherine

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

Uhuh .. Keep the people focused on the unimportant and those supposedly very important issues abroad. Cut, cut, cut at home, but give and spend abroad on a grand scale. This is an old story .. GovernMints and Bag men at work. Intentional greed and theft is what it is. Is this the intentional breaking down of the Country? I think it is!

===

Oh and Catherine, I think you mean - Shill O'Reilly?

His mother thinks the schools are "dens of iniquity," but I wonder what she thinks of modern TV programming? Also, I've heard people call our education system "The School of Fools".

I don't know?

--

Sir...

_________________You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the thought police.

This young man isn't overpowered in the brain department, Sir, although he tries hard. He doesn't stand a chance having been raised in a home like that. He didn't get his drivers' license until he'd passed his 18th birthday. Mama shelters him from everything except the lies of Faux News. I've told him to visit TVNL sometime to get good information about how to watch the news.

I may have endangered my life!

I wish this boy would join the Coast Guard when he completes his studies...and he will, eventually. That would keep him out of Iraq (hopefully) yet give him some much needed views of the world.

The Coast Guard made a world of difference in my stepson...a young man going nowhere but with lots of brains... until his evil stepmother (me) stepped in and told him that I wasn't going to accept his working at Papa's Pizza for the rest of his life. (I had to go around his mother, who didn't care one way or the other what he did.)

He's doing great, and has decided to make the CG his career.

Catherine

_________________

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

Good idea. Pizza jobs are ok for those who really need them, but young people should try and seek a Career if they can. Good idea on keeping him safe from Iraq and who knows where else? I know a guy who was in the CG and he did well and retired at an early age.

Well, atleast that guy has a chance to come here and seek information on how to watch the news. His mother sheltering him will only hurt him later on in life. I've seen the same thing happen in my area.

Faux News - Proof that propaganda works.

I wish there was an Anti-Faux news channel. My choice for the first program would be: How to watch the news!

--

Sir...

_________________You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced; and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are visited by the thought police.